Relic Foresees ‘Strong Possibility’ Of More Dawn Of War

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It’s been one of those days. And by that, I of course mean what everybody does when they say that: a day during which basically everythingyou read somehow relates to THQ’s slow, withering dismemberment at the vulture-like beaks of hungry publishers. But that goes without saying. Some things, however, aren’t quite as simple as months and months of studio and license sales, culminating in more questions than answers. For instance, what happens if a series gets tangled up in the crisscrossing webs of multiple owners? Sure, THQ’s now history, but that still leaves Relic, Sega, and Games Workshop to figure out the logistics of bringing Dawn of War back from the brink. And yet, while it won’t necessarily be the easiest thing in the world, Relic game director Quinn Duffy is confident that it can – and probably will – eventually happen.

Speaking with Eurogamer, Duffy was quite upbeat about the modern Warhammer RTS classic’s chances of rising again. Fortunately, it turns out that Sega was right for Relic on a number of levels, allowing the planets to align for more Games Workshop collaborations. Duffy explained:

“Dawn of War, because it’s a license and it’s owned by Games Workshop, they have the opportunity to work that license with whoever they want. I would hope it would be us again. We had a great working relationship with Games Workshop. Sega is establishing one now with the fantasy license for Creative Assembly.”

“There’s a strong possibility we’ll all be working together again on Dawn of War.”

He did, however, note that he’d want to take a serious technological leap before letting a new Dawn of War see the light of day, especially in regards to Relic’s current in-house game engine. “Whatever’s happening has to take that into account,” he added.

And then he did a bunch of coy smiling and teasing, which is akin to signing contracts and confirmation papers with my heart. This had better come to fruition, Duffy. Otherwise, I will break, like a lone marine against a Carnifex. What will your sly looks and pleasing words be then, huh?

I actually prefer DoW 2 quite a lot. The single player wasn’t much fun, but the multiplayer is a lot more complex than the unit spamming that was DoW 1. Part of this might be because I like the micromanagement that comes with loads of activatable skills. It’s like a MOBA/RTS hybrid. The units are often about as complex as the single one you control in the DotA-like MOBA games. (God I still hate the MOBA -abbrevation)

Dawn of War 2 was quite different from the mainstream, so it’s easy to see why it splits opinions so much. Still, I find it to be one of the most enjoyable pvp multiplayer RTS games.

Yeah I far preferred DoW2 for many reasons, but mostly because it felt much more 40k. Starcraft style base building isn’t something that happens in the Warhammer 40k background, fiction, wargames or rpgs.

But also I have never enjoyed base building amd tank spamming whereas drop pods and whooosh-bang jumppacks were so much more fun.

Indeed, it felt closer to smaller battles in the TT. I would certainly love to see what they might come up with if they went down that route further, making the factions handle even more differently. Which might open the possibility for bigger battles, but in a different way than pure squad-based standard RTS.

Smaller battles on the Table top? Are you mad. The average 40k match had twice as many troops and armoured things than DoW2. Yet I do agree creating a greater difference in factions but that’s pretty hard to do with 40k since every faction has equivalent units as of the most recent rules.

If you’re still keen on playing it, check out the Elite Mod. They first aimed at balancing the game out and removing bugs, but now they’ve added Grey Knights as a faction and a few new units for all the old ones. The quality of their work is pretty good too. I’m pretty sure the multiplayer scene for the Elite Mod is bigger than the vanilla DoW 2 multiplayer scene. Almost every cast posted on gamereplays.net is of Elite Mod.

I prefer to think DoW 2 as an experiment seperate from DoW. It’s actually pretty good but disappointing when the scale of the battles are small. They’re probably trying to opt for something CoH-like with this but it didn’t really satisfy me that much, even when I thought it was quite fun to play. Plus, the made Eldar much more fun to play as than in DoW

The first one was a great little RTS with a really nice sense of scale, there were a LOT of units in your army, but never unmanageable numbers. In my opinion the main thing it suffered from was a lack of tactility and responsiveness from your units. It made micromanagement feel kind of hamfisted compared to Starcraft and Command and Conquer games. I really, really loved the dynamics of the different races, especially the necrons (once they balanced the goddamn necron warriors). It really felt like you had hundreds of thousands of robot zombies just below the surface, slowly awakening at your call.

Dawn of War 2 was brilliant. There are no two ways about it. While purists may dislike the levelling and lack of base-building, and w40k diehards would hate the tiny scale, I really liked it. The game simply felt really nice to play, and the choice to forgo chaos in favour of tyranids in the base game showed a dedication to solid gameplay compared to lore-catering. Oh, and it was really, really pretty.

If Relic can get their hands on the IP, I’d trust them to make a worthy successor to the series.

But DOW2 was objectively bad in many ways. An incredible amount repetition, easily exploitable retreat mechanic and a unit count so small that it basically prevented you from any real customization. Maybe they improved on it in the expansions but I thought the base game was rubbish. Multiplayer was slightly better but only because it was DOW 1 HD.

Bhazor, you are blowing things way out of proportion. Sure, there was some repetition but it was differentiated by strength levels, attack approaches and opposing force types. I finished Dow2 three times and all I could hear was choirs praising the Emperor.

Opposing forces didn’t matter because there weren’t enough customisation options to allow novel ways to fight different enemies, approaches didn’t really factor in as most missions lead you from one fight to the next and strength level is just MMO style level scaling. It was the absolute classic example of style over substance, bombastic noise, flashy effects and great voice work around a very shallow experience.

You can complete the whole game using a single tactic with a single squad layout. Over and over and over again. In terms of strategy it was a big step back from CoH or DoW.

I’ve started to really dislike “awkward action games”, which I define as pretty much any game where you control multiple units and twitch is important. This includes everything from Grimrock to Starcraft.

I like games where I’m not wrestling with the controls and madly clicking all over the fucking place. In an RTS, that means more strategy and less real-time. SupCom was ideal.

I think it was a very Marmite game as it was such a departure from standard RTS games at the time. I personally found the multiplayer aspect of it much more engaging than the first and sank countless hours into it, due to the depth and complexity of mastering the races and gameplay.

Why does an RTS necessarily NEED base building for it to be classed as an RTS? Personally, I find the likes of Starcraft, and the old but beloved C&C and Total Annihilation to me more of an exercise in resource management and build orders than actual strategy. DOW2 was more of a chess like game of counters and micro management, not just a case of who ever has the most units wins, but instead how you use the units you have. There are plenty of games more focused on base building and build orders, leave DOW as the brilliant micro management strategy that it is.

I’d like to see another 40k action game too. If they’re going to stick with Space Marine then they could contrive some reason for Titus to end up working alongside the Deathwatch. Or just sideline the plot from the original and focus on new characters. Jolly Co-Operation should be included either way, because what fun is there in playing as a space marine if you can’t fight alongside your battle brothers?

There’s also the game that once was Dark Millennium Online. Apparently that was getting retooled into a non-MMO, though who knows where it is now.

I’d like a Mass-Effect-With-Good-Combat (Of Grey Knights), about an Inquisitor landing on a Chaos-infected planet, managing his team of weird-ass retainers, tracking down the evil, and eventually taking on the demons with Grey Knight terminators.

How ’bout a casual game called Munitorium Dash where you match military supplies to mustachioed Imperial Guard Commanders. The better you do, the lower your score. Your score represents the number of lives lost due directly to your own incompetence. Sometimes Commissars show up. If you don’t get their order right, they kill you.

Well every single mission in the original DoW 2 was about 10-15 minutes long, and lack of in-mission saving prevented save scumming, which in turn made you improvise. I would like to see a bigger punishment for getting defeated in battle than losing a day, but … eh. At any rate, Chaos Rising actually added in-mission save feature.

I’m desperately hoping your good authority is wrong, I can understand why people would say GW is worried about losing TT sales to an identically structured pc version, but what about the legion of gamers that never will even attempt to break into TT? Or others like myself who tried but stopped due to lack of interest from friends and local gamers? I would hope that that group would account for themselves well in sales. IMO it does not seem likely that one fully invested in TT with those hours spent painting, assembling, and playing, would suddenly shelve it all for the digital version.

I’d love a DoW3 to be a mix of the old first game in the series with what worked well in DoW2 but right now CoH2 does a lot of those core things pretty well and the state of the 40k lore is pretty dire these days.

If Relic can work together with the Creative Assembly provided Sega has the rights, I do hope for the day when they can put both of their strengths into one game and allow for epic battles with thousands upon thousands of units fighting each other, though thousands of Lasguns firing at once might prove to be overwhelming on system resources.

I really don’t understand the attachment to base-building for a Relic-style RTS. Even back in vCoH, base-building was extremely periphery (in a high-level match that would last for 45-60 mins, you were lucky if you built all the buildings on the tech tree) and I’m honestly surprised it made a return in the CoH 2 beta (except maybe to give differentiation between the two factions).

Either way, I need a new Dawn of War game yesterday. I’m having an absolute blast with the CoH 2 beta (I received XCom as a Steam gift at about the same time, and invested more than 60 hours into it to XCom’s 15), but it made me remember how much I love the 40K universe. And bring back Harlequins next time so I can turn those pesky Assault Terminators into Space Marine purée.

When it comes to Warhammer 40K, I really want a turn based game again. Strike that, what I really want is something that plays like Chaos Gate. While I’ve always wanted a computer game version of the table top rules, I can understand why Games Workshop wouldn’t: why bother buying hundreds of dollars worth of Space Marines that you have to build and paint when you can just plonk down $20 for the Blood Angel DLC? Something smaller scale, like the older SSI 40K games, would be awesome though.

If they had to do a RTS, though, I want one with base building elements again. While I enjoyed DoW 2 for it’s game play and RPG mechanics, I did miss many elements of DoW1 base building, especially in the single player. I’m not entirely sold on the idea of a 40K version of Total War: I always thought that Fantasy fit the Total War game play better.

Still, it’s kind of nice to get some clarification on where those rights stand!

DoW, along with Winter Assault is an RTS which I genuinely enjoyed, despite really hating the RTS genre. Really, grouping the units together into squads makes it *so* much more managable. I still think W40k is rubbish for 13 year olds.

I really liked the first Dawn of War because I think it nailed perfectly the setting and the atmosphere. On top of large scale battles and excellent animations it had all those awesome unit replies that really that fit their side. They really did make the game play more imersive since they mae game more atmospheric. So a bunch of crazed cultists were not only different by stats but by personality from a bunch of calm and precise Tau.

I hope the single player of DoW 3 will just be as dumbed down and boring and with a bad AI as in DoW 2. That will save me a lot of money. In the meanwhile I will keep enjoying myself with the first DoW series.

There is NO basebuilding in the DoW universe, that was such a lame carry over from other RTS like Starcraft and warcraft. Glad they ditched that and let you get right into the action!!! basebuilding is really just a waste of time, no reason for it at all for a fast paced RTS.